Work stacks up for dotcom survivior

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As giddy investors fell over themselves to throw money at
internet companies during the dotcom boom of the late 1990s, a
fledgling company that resisted the lure to list on the sharemarket
is now riding a boom of its own making.

Internet software developer PageUp has outlasted many of its
now-defunct competitors to become one of the fastest-growing
companies in Australia, a feat recognised by its victory in the
information technology category of the Age/Dun &
Bradstreet Victorian Business Awards for 2004.

The Melbourne-based company specialises in recruitment
management software for large corporations, and now boasts Optus,
Coles Myer and BHP Billiton among its biggest clients.

Managing director Karen Cariss, who founded PageUp with her
husband, Simon, in 1997, said an inability to borrow money for the
business meant profit, no matter how small, was crucial. "We both
started the business out of being uni students, so we had really no
prior income, house or capital pool from which to secure any
finances off," she said.

Simon, a software developer in his own right, oversees
production as the company's chief technical officer, while Karen
controls the commercial side of the business.

While it has been the success of its recruitment management
program, PageUp People, that has fuelled the company's growth, the
program was initially created in response to problems at the
company itself.

"We'd put an ad in the paper for a Web developer, and we'd
literally got hundreds and hundreds of applications, through fax,
email and the mail," Karen said.

"It (the program) literally just came out of our own need. We
showed it to some of the clients we were working with at the time,
like ANZ, and some of the recruiting agencies, like Adecco, and
that was when we found we'd stumbled onto something with a broader
application."

The revised program is now able to automatically post job
advertisements, receive applications and enable applicants to book
in interview times on the client's website.

While virtually all profits were pumped back into software
development for the first five years, a "painful" period, according
to Karen Cariss, the short-term pain is now paying dividends for
PageUp.

Sales topped $2 million for the first time last year, and
fivefold and tenfold earnings rises for the past two years helped
it to 33rd place in BRW's recent "Fast 100" list of Australia's
fastest-growing companies.